The Dream Repository

The form of parable chosen by Milton for the epic poem is the dream. This would intensify the likelihood even more, that contemporary opposition would read it as simply an artistic use of fantasy and not tend to give it much thought as anything serious. More importantly, though, the form of the poem is also the resource. Milton states very plainly and directly in Paradise Lost, Book IX, that he has a specific muse, or mediumistic resource, a spiritual being who communicated to him while he slept. So it was also in dream, that he was given the information from which to also create a dream story line, complete with "fantasy" and, therefore, an acceptable "reality" for Church authorities. In other words, who would take seriously the concept of "an angel dictating personally in a dream?" After all, "Only the Bible, the word of God outlines clearly who God speaks to, nothing more, nothing less could be true." (Wouldn't this make a great film today—the concept of an angel dictating God's law, where people find that, indeed, there is more than what the world thought of God and Nature…. Oh, that film has already been done a number of times.)